How do Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould differ in their views on evolution?

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the views of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould on evolutionary theory.

 

The day Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the world was shaken. Since then, the idea of evolution has influenced many areas of society and continues to be the subject of endless research and many different directions. There are many different theories about evolution. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, and Stephen Jay Gould, author of Full House, are two of the most prominent. Their opposing views on evolution are understandably different, given their different fields of study. However, evolutionary theory is a subject that is deduced from evidence over a long period of time, spanning hundreds of millions of years. Evolutionary theory is still a work in progress, and we don’t know what the future holds. Unless we learn how to manipulate genes to our liking, or gain the ability to control time, we will never know for sure what direction biological evolution will take. Both Gould and Dawkins have made their arguments for evolution by studying fossils of both contemporary creatures and those that lived in previous eras. As we understand these different arguments for evolution, we have come to view evolution as anthropocentric and think about how these studies and discoveries can lead to progressive ways to understand and study the world’s creations. However, the concept of evolution has been detrimental to many societal problems. Therefore, while it is true that evolutionary theory has led civilization in a progressive and developmental direction, it is necessary to think about the problems that have arisen in society indirectly through evolutionary theory.
Charles Darwin’s book shook the world not because he explained evolution, but because he proposed the “mechanism” of evolution and showed various observations and evidence, suggesting a new direction for evolution.

First, all organisms have more offspring than can survive in a given environment.
Second, those offspring are born with different traits.
Third, only those individuals with traits adapted to a given environment survive to produce offspring.
Fourth, the traits of the surviving individuals are passed on to their descendants.

All of these mechanisms are called natural selection, and the current theory of evolution centers on Darwin’s mechanisms to study and develop how organisms adapt and evolve. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and animal behaviorist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, wrote The Selfish Gene, which cites the theory of group selection. In the book, he argues that natural selection works on genes rather than individuals, and that all behaviors of living things evolve to spread their genes further. Dawkins argued that genes are what evolve and that the body is only a carrier, and that genes themselves are the mechanism of survival. Throughout his books and research, Dawkins views all of evolution from the perspective of the gene, and ultimately says that evolution is one directional process: genes evolve to spread more copies of themselves. In this way, Dawkins created a huge concept of genes, and the world became increasingly interested in them. In simple terms, Dawkins says that natural selection operates primarily at the gene level and is the most important factor in evolution. And because organisms naturally behave in ways that allow them to best replicate their own genes, this explains altruistic behavior. This simple logic led some people to view evolutionary theory as an explanation for the phenomenon of selfish societies. Darwin’s theory of evolution was perhaps trying to understand changes in living things, but on the other hand, it changed the way we understand and look at human beings and rationalized the errors of this society. In the 1930s, population genetics and experimental genetics used Darwin’s mutation and natural selection to argue that the history of life could be explained by looking at what emerges and looking through it. Genetics continues to advance our understanding of life. However, it has continued to face bioethical problems, but it continues to be attempted as a reason to change humanity in a progressive direction. By defining the direction of human evolution by genes, humans who are moving beyond natural selection to artificial selection will ignore natural selection, and the system of modern competitive society will lead to greater inequality and social class discrimination. And these ideas have helped to create eugenics, genetic manipulation, and competitive social systems. Hitler was also a believer in evolution, and he began to believe in the concept of eugenics as a support for evolutionary theory, and he believed that the genocide of other races would advance humanity’s evolution. When the genes told us that we have a device for survival, many people in the world accepted it, and we rationalized our competing social systems and selfish ideas and strategized as creatures driven by genes that do anything to survive. Genetic engineering has advanced at a tremendous rate. Researchers have already identified many traits through genes, and the technology will continue to advance endlessly. It’s possible that the idea of evolution is simply the driving force behind our selfish behavior and competitive societies.
Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at Harvard University in the United States, has a different idea. Evolution, he says, is neither progress nor regression; it’s diversity through variation that is passed on to the next generation. He points out the dangers of attributing the evolution of all traits to genes and argues that genes are only one factor in evolution, as organisms must go through complex processes. If you look at human history, the most complex organisms that existed in the caveman era and the most complex organisms that exist today, humans, are quite different, and the diversity and complexity of bacteria suggests that evolution is not simply genetic progression, but an increase in diversity. Gould disputes these claims, saying that natural selection is driven by many different factors. And as it mutates over time, it doesn’t do so in a directional way, but rather in all directions, and what survives and thrives is contingent and accidental. I also think that evolutionary theory does not solve the history of the secrets of life, but only explains our abnormal and selfish behavior. Darwin’s cousin Francis Golton’s “eugenics,” which followed evolutionary theory, was a way to weed out various misfits. Gould believes that the diversity that evolution brings to the table is wrongly seen and labeled as different: disabled, mentally ill, homosexual, etc. It rationalizes rape and racist, selfish behavior. Evolutionary theory didn’t create these social phenomena, but it seems to have become a tool to reinforce and rationalize them. As Gould notes, “Biological arguments for racism would have been common before 1850. But after evolutionary theory became accepted as orthodoxy, there was an exponential rise in such views.”
Dawkins and Gould’s arguments in different fields illustrate the heated debate over evolutionary theory since The Origin of Species. The common thread among these different theories is that all life has evolved steadily from a few ancestors over billions of years of Earth’s history, and all of this has happened naturally, with a large role for chance. Gould and Dawkins differ in the direction and outcome of what they call “chance,” but evolution always requires “chance” circumstances, and the important factor of natural selection works slowly over time. And in their arguments, science strives to convey objective knowledge as it is. Given these common denominators, we can conclude that evolutionary theory can be interpreted in many ways, but ultimately it is the process of life changing through natural selection over time. With this idea in mind, we can ask whether evolutionary theory is a science that can be used to benefit humans, to guide the world in a progressive direction, or to learn from the process of evolution. Evolutionary theory has spread beyond the realm of natural science to other fields, and while these various fields have helped humans in some cases, they have also led us in the wrong direction socially and scientifically by understanding human nature. Evolutionary theory has also developed into disciplines such as social evolution and sociobiology. Edward Wilson’s ‘sociobiology’ in the 1970s is a prime example. Rather than evaluating behavior through traditional psychology as described in Darwin’s Table, sociobiology explains complex human social behavior by relating it to survival evolution and translating it into genetic traits. It allows us to see how the external environment affects the mindset of human creatures. I was able to relate human social behaviors such as sacrificial behavior, social cooperation, polygamy, rape, etc. to biological evolutionary theory. Of course, it is dangerous to think that sociobiology is unconditionally good and that all behavior is genetically driven. These ideas have also led to the strange conclusion that everything that is wrong or peculiar about society is simply in our nature from an evolutionary perspective. It is difficult to reconcile sociology with biology, but people have made the connection through evolutionary theory. However, these connections only supported concepts such as asset classes, competitive societies, and survival of the fittest. Then, when you combine libertarian ideas with natural phenomena, you run into ethical problems. Dawkins created a cultural unit of memory called the meme, which can explain belief in religion but cannot explain emotions and values beyond that, just as genetics and evolutionary theory cannot explain everything. Evolutionary theory has given us a new way of understanding human beings, but as we have seen, it can be abused. On the contrary, various phenomena such as art, religion, homosexuality, and low birthrates, which are important elements of our humanity, cannot be explained by evolutionary theories such as natural selection alone. In some ways, efforts to understand human society through evolution have been misinterpreted and have led to bad results. Therefore, we need to look at evolutionary theory from a different perspective in order to predict social issues and fix them.
Through Dawkins and Gould, we have been able to approach evolutionary theory from different directions and recognize the problems and important points it raises. The importance of genes has made it possible to think about how we have evolved and how organisms are changing. And the development of new disciplines such as sociobiology, based on evolutionary theory, has allowed us to better understand the problems in society. Evolutionary theory has given us a new way of looking at and understanding human beings and human society, but it has also led to bad consequences, such as human selfishness and social phenomena that are justified by evolutionary theory. As Dawkins said, “the most important contribution of science is to discover new ways of looking at old theories or facts.” What is needed now is a new way of looking at evolutionary theory that is positive and conducive to human progress. People have simply used the concept of evolution to their advantage to understand and explain things. Being selfish people, these ideas have also been selfish tools.